I almost wonder if he's posting these to see how much of a backstory we, the fans, can come up with. Just to see how much we'll read into something as (seemingly) meaningless as two characters building a sandcastle. Just to see how nuts we'll get.

I really have to admire Randall here. He posts a few pictures of some people building a sandcastle, and people start seeing metaphors for humanity, civilization, life, death, love, hate, and countless other concepts. The man is good.

You forgot about the hurricane, flaming oil slick, and alligators upon which BHG rides..

P.S. I am Randall, but not that Randall.We can rebuild it. We have the technology. We can make it better than it was. Better … stronger … well, maybe not faster.Well, BlitzGirl is experiencing a bit of a title wave.

Well let's see. 1095 posts, 92 frames. that gives roughly 12 posts per frame (or per half hour). Given this number, it would only take about 77 more frames (to 169), or about 38 more hours to reach the 2030 posts in pickup artist. Of course, pickup had over 8 days doing so, and we're already over half way there in less than 48 hours. that's gotta mean something.

Back to topic, however. It seems to me that the 3rd dimension really is a factor, as he is standing on the 2nd level of the tower, but he's still behind the taller part he's working on, so who knows how wide or deep that chunk of sand really is.

Back to her leaving, now. It was mentioned maybe she was leaving to get a camera or flag, but I thought of something else, too. We don't know the relationship of these two characters. They could have just been two people enjoying themselves who spontaneously decided to build a sandcastle together. The guy may have been interested in her, but had to leave for (as of yet) an unknown reason, but didn't want to seem like a jerk for just leaving, so he said 'later'. Of course, now, the girl, possibly not really caring much for him, didn't want him to get the wrong idea when she had to go for whatever reason, and didn't say anything. Then again, maybe they're siblings, so neither of their feelings might be hurt if they leave for whatever reason, but since they're family, they'll probably come back later, just like the guy did. who knows.

In case of a rogue AI, know your paradoxes! Stand calmly, and shout:1) This statement is false!2) New mission: Refuse this mission3) Does a set of all sets contain itself?

Perhaps it's his way of saying he's on holiday at the beach with his family; maybe the sequence of images will last until he gets back. It's certainly a good way to keep everyone paying attention if he has to miss a couple of updates.

Whatever the reason he decided to take this format, it was planned. There is no way it was a sudden idea. All of these images were already on the server. They had to be. I induced this by looking at that huge chunk of JavaScript. It would take a while to come up with that many lines of code. But hey, he may be uploading them on the fly. But it seems like a lot to upload every day (48). Two days uses 96. This has to be something he worked on for a long time. So this is not about something that suddenly happened. Nor recently, even.

my sister wrote:[the sun] can go to Hell and brighten that place up a while.

enumerated powers wrote:So now the question is what happens 2 or 3 frames from now? Do we get a Wednesday comic, and before that a conclusion to this one, or does this one keep running for another unknown (unknowable) number of half-hour frames?

Finally posting here to join this piece of xkcd history. I've been watching both the progression of the comic, and of this thread, and it reminds me why I love the xkcd world so much. Not only for the genious comic that Randal creates, but the fanbase that has developed here.

Without further adeu, here is my take on the comic:

This progression continues for quite some time, the sand castle gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

Eventually we reach a sort of equalibrium point, with the couple standing back to admire their work.

Then, the cuple leaves the castle behind to go home.

Finally, some event comes and destroys the castle, be it wind, wave, or BHG.

And then, the couple returns, sits down, and the comic loops in this same 30 min update manner, in order to have at least a shadow of the same, "wait for it" effect on future xkcd readers as it has had on us.

for that link, I vote that Aubron gets 1E4 internets, 5E6 Kudos Points, perfect Karma, and all the cookies.

Day 3:"Alright, just finish up those class implementations, and we can get this working."Day 5:"Ok, forget cleaning up the GUI, lets just find out why it keeps crashing after the user inputs that option."Day 7:"It actually compiles? Great! Ship it!"

pete3442 wrote:Is the speed of time in the comic changing, or is he this much slower at building than she is?

This is a good point. It does not make sense to presume that the story is happening in the same time as we are seeing it; there has been no indication of change in light in almost 48 hours, so I must assume that what for us has taken two days now has for the characters taken an afternoon-ish. (A reasonable guess for moderately skilled people constructing a sand castle of that scale.)

But is the same amount of time always passing between each frame?

Given the title of the comic, I would assume that perception and passage of time is meaningful here. Maybe the guy is not slower at building the castle, he is just more perceptive and absorbing more frames of the experience, causing his work to appear slower to us.

free-bee wrote:Whatever the reason he decided to take this format, it was planned. There is no way it was a sudden idea. All of these images were already on the server. They had to be. I induced this by looking at that huge chunk of JavaScript. It would take a while to come up with that many lines of code. But hey, he may be uploading them on the fly. But it seems like a lot to upload every day (48). Two days uses 96. This has to be something he worked on for a long time. So this is not about something that suddenly happened. Nor recently, even.

The javascript wasn't in place originally. The version you see now was also not the first version, it is the 7th revision. The only thing it does, as was explained earlier, is fetch an event from one of 7 randomly selected servers, to automatically refresh the image that the server sends it, while also waiting a random number of seconds after the event is received, to help reduce the load from people refreshing. The javascript was an off-the-cuff addition, and IMHO, doesn't give any insight on when the pictures were created. I originally thought (with influence from some of the early debbie downers), that maybe he was passing time waiting for test results, or something, and so was drawing these pictures while he waited, uploading them as he went. Now, however, I believe that there must be some chunk of comics that were ready to go. As far as planned, I'm sure the medium was well planned in advance, but that doesn't mean the comic was.

In case of a rogue AI, know your paradoxes! Stand calmly, and shout:1) This statement is false!2) New mission: Refuse this mission3) Does a set of all sets contain itself?